Cheat Sheets

Once you’ve figured out the type of differential equation you’re dealing with, you can move on to solving the problem by using the method of undetermined coefficients or the power series method. If a stubborn[more…]

Nowadays, grade point averages are a big deal, especially for college-bound students and their anxious parents. GPA is easy to calculate if you understand that it's simply an average. To determine an average[more…]

When you go shopping, you're often faced with discounts and sales offers that change the price of an item. In addition, many states in the United States charge sales tax, and if you're shopping abroad,[more…]

Many household projects require that you be able to calculate area or volume. Whether you're painting your kid's room, mulching your flowerbed for the winter, planting grass seed in the spring, or tackling[more…]

Exams, especially those covering basic maths, can be stressful and frustrating, and not many people enjoy doing them. But jumping through the hoops of an exam doesn’t have to be hard. If you can reach[more…]

When you’re under pressure in a maths test, you’re bound to make some mistakes. But some mistakes are avoidable when you know how; there are also some mistakes you can learn to check for and put right.[more…]

Learn your number facts efficiently and with the minimum of fuss. The quicker you can command total mastery of your number facts, the quicker you can stop having to learn them, and the more time you can[more…]

Marking where you think a probability lies on a number line is an obvious way to deal with probabilities on a basic maths test. The left end of the line represents ‘impossible’ and the right end represents[more…]

The most reliable way to estimate the probability of an event happening is to do an experiment. You need to know about two kinds of probability experiment. In the first type, you repeat things under pretty[more…]

Teachers around the world use probability trees. Probability trees are quite versatile if you use them properly. The idea of a probability tree is to start on the left with ‘the whole thing’ or one. Every[more…]

Probability squares are a really good option when you have two independent events – two things that don’t affect each other. You may like probability squares if you’re more a ‘shapes person’ than a ‘numbers[more…]

We use three different types of average in maths: the mean, the mode and the median, each of which describes a different ‘normal’ value. The mean is what you get if you share everything equally, the mode[more…]

Drawing a pie chart on the computer is a fantastic experience, at least compared with doing it by hand. It takes seconds, and you don’t have to remember how to use a protractor or worry about getting your[more…]

A bar chart looks a little like a picture of a skyline, consisting of different heights of ‘tower’ lined up side–by-side. The heights of the towers represent the relative sizes of the categories they represent[more…]

A pie chart looks – you’ve guessed it – a bit like a pie. The chart is a circle with various-sized slices ‘cut out’ from the middle to the edge. The size of the slices shows the relative size of the categories[more…]

A line graph shows how a value changes, usually over time. Most line graphs look like a jagged line going across the page. How high the line is above a time marked on the axis tells you how high the value[more…]

The Table of Joy is an incredibly useful method for working out any kind of problem involving proportions – that is to say, if you double one of the numbers, the other automatically doubles. For example[more…]